Not to categorize the native Alaskan population but they are making toilet hooch in buckets and plastic milk jugs. Just like my good ol' college mead days.

They're not running distillers. As poor as these people are, I seriously doubt anyone is running an 8"-5 stage column. And, if they were, you can bet the death rates would skyrocket. More from vapor detonation, than alcohol poisoning..well, errr maybe.

For a dangerous drunk, all you need is water, a few pounds of sugar and some turbo yeast. A heating tape, a bucket with airlock and 4 days. The woman got hammered and aspirated her stomach contents. People have done that with beer.

I forgot to mention, as someone already has, that sanitation is important. Sure you can get a massive case of the runs, but that is typicially non-fatal. Usually, contamination either kills the ferment or results in off-flavors. much like Red, White & Blue lager.

fappomatic:For a dangerous drunk, all you need is water, a few pounds of sugar and some turbo yeast. A heating tape, a bucket with airlock and 4 days.

Actually, most turbo yeasts advise against an airlock- or even too tight a seal, for that matter. CO2's heavier than air, and should provide an appropriate barrier on top of the sugar wine. The massive amounts of gas excreted by the turbo yeasts nomming on sugar would be risky in a tightly sealed container.

Skyd1v:robbiex0r: The Stealth Hippopotamus: The highest I ever got a homebrew is 14%. If you die from drinking 14% homebrew you are trying to die.

Me thinks distilling is involved.

Turbo yeasts will get you up to 20%... but it won't taste very good.

Out in the villages the usual method is to use Kool-Ade, sugar, water, and normal baking yeast. Normally this is allowed to ferment in a 5 gallon bucket kept near the Monitor or wood stove until it's ready to drink. Not sure what the alcohol levels get to, but when you drink a LOT of it, it still reaches the desired effect.

I have heard of some over-achievers using freeze-distillation to increase the alcohol levels though.

Fun trivia fact: Most of the dry villages in Alaska keep the yeast and Kool-Ade behind the counter with the cold medicines. They actually make people sign for it so they know who is buying yeast. But since the postal service has no issue with delivering yeast and packets of fruit-flavored drink mix, it's kind of a stop-gap solution at best.

I've heard this too, but I'm not entirely sure what the attenuation levels of bread yeast would be. I don't think you'd squeeze more than 8-10% out of it. Freeze distilling could easily get you up to 30% from there, though.

SpiderQueenDemon:rwfan: While the comparison is not a great one I think most of you are missing the point. What the officer is trying to say is the drinkers don't know the alcohol content of what they are drinking so sometimes they drink more alcohol than they realize. That can lead to accidental death. Just like not knowing the strength of street drugs can lead to accidental overdose.

A hygrometerhydrometer is $5 from Midwest Supplies and tells you your alcohol content. They even make fancy-boots $60 digital ones a homebrewer might get for her birthday from a concerned Grandma who worries she might not realize how strong her latest IPA is or a supportive Nana who is dearly hoping for an 11%+ ABV bourbon-casked winter lager to serve at the Christmas party, as the case may be. (I come from a family of Irish-German barmaids and alewives.)

Not knowing your ABV is like bringing your restored classic car to a show and not knowing the engine displacement. A high ABV is something to brag about, so any 'brewer with any sense of community or pride would take special pains to know, not just for the street cred, but also to gauge whether successive batches were improving at all. This isn't just a case of some lady pulling a Hendrix with iffy beer or, more likely, moonshine, but the authorities not caring to tell the difference between sketchy homebrewers just in it for booze n' lulz and proud adherents to one of humanity's most time-honored traditions.

In related news, looks like I can be a beer-snob about any-effing-thing...

orclover:How the hell do you get apple juice cheaply and not have it be "blended" crap that is 90% grape juice? I am in Texas, not alot of apple orchards. I tried concentrated apple juice and what I got was.....well...bad. Got 4 gallons of it hidden around the house that i'm afraid to ever open again. I even tried freeze distilling it and after a few weeks I ended up with the most sour slushy in history.

Watsur sekret?

I bought 60 pounds of gala apples and got to pressing. Yeah I roll like that.

Then just for giggles I make a batch using Simply Apple. 3 years later the only way you can tell the difference is reading the label!!

So 200 bucks (not counting cost of press) or a little under 30 bucks and no back pain.....

Home distilled alcohol will kill you if you add something stupid to it to give it more kick or "smooth" out the flavour. Wood alcohol is a good example. It's poison. Antifreeze is another common additive to home made wines and spirits. Even Bart Simpson had the sense to know that was wrong.

If there are no contaminants (lead and other toxins from the equipment used to distill the alcohol, contaminants from the bottles or jugs used to store it or from recycled barrels that contained something highly toxic before being turned into a still), then the high alcohol content alone might do the job. Moonshine is often very high proof, ranging all the way up to 200 (maximum proof--pure alcohol).

Those are the three main killers:

adulterationcontaminationover-dose.

You might also be killed by something biological such as bacteria if you don't exercise due caution and careful hygienic practices. A nice warm vat of home-brewed beer or wine, even infected equipment or raw materials used to distill spirits, might kill you.

I wouldn't be surprised if you couldn't get ergotism from grain used to make spirits. IIRC, this is caused by a type of mold that infects grains and which can cause hallucinations and death. It has been proposed as a possible contributor to legends of werewolves, vampires and other monsters because of the bizarre behavior, mental, and physical side-effects, it can cause in people poisoned with it.

In addition to these causes, there are certain vegetable materials which could be used to make alcohol which are toxic unless carefully processed. Few of them would be available in the developed world, but native peoples in South America, Africa and Asia might well use raw materials that create deadly cyanide compounds or worse.

SpiderQueenDemon:Not knowing your ABV is like bringing your restored classic car to a show and not knowing the engine displacement. A high ABV is something to brag about, so any 'brewer with any sense of community or pride would take special pains to know, not just for the street cred, but also to gauge whether successive batches were improving at all.

impaler:Nope. I don't give a shat about the ABV. Well, very little anyway.

I brew it up. If it tastes great - great.

ABV is just about getting drunk. I go to the store for that.

For my first few batches I was obsessed with before and after gravity readings. Now I don't really care. I keg, so bottle bombs are not a worry. If people want to know the ABV I'll just make something up that sounds about right.

And for Robbiex0r - high ABV isn't really something to brag about unless you're trying to make rocket fuel or you're marketing to newly minted beer snobs (e.g. Dogfish Head 120 minute)

SpiderQueenDemon:rwfan: While the comparison is not a great one I think most of you are missing the point. What the officer is trying to say is the drinkers don't know the alcohol content of what they are drinking so sometimes they drink more alcohol than they realize. That can lead to accidental death. Just like not knowing the strength of street drugs can lead to accidental overdose.

A hygrometer is $5 from Midwest Supplies and tells you your alcohol content.

It's a hydrometer and thanks but I already have one. The person described in the article was not ordering supplies from Midwest, was not brewing beer and sure as hell was not going to spend extra money on a hydrometer.

Cheers [raises a delicious snakebite of pale ale and apfelwein]hope I don't fall asleep before the Wings Blackhawks game is over

rwfan:A hygrometer is $5 from Midwest Supplies and tells you your alcohol content.

It's a hydrometer and thanks but I already have one. The person described in the article was not ordering supplies from Midwest, was not brewing beer and sure as hell was not going to spend extra money on a hydrometer.

Are we talking about Midwest Supplies in Minneapolis? With them and Northern Brewer, is MSP the home brew supply capital of the US?

impaler:SpiderQueenDemon: Not knowing your ABV is like bringing your restored classic car to a show and not knowing the engine displacement. A high ABV is something to brag about, so any 'brewer with any sense of community or pride would take special pains to know, not just for the street cred, but also to gauge whether successive batches were improving at all.

Nope. I don't give a shat about the ABV. Well, very little anyway.

I brew it up. If it tastes great - great.

ABV is just about getting drunk. I go to the store for that.

Collecting gravity is beneficial for brewing because it's more data, and like all processes, you can use that to improve. For one, you can determine your efficiency, which can/will lead to better process, less malt, etc. Measuring gravity doesn't mean you are trying to chase that ABV up. A good brewer wants to know the gravity whether s/he is making a mild 3.5% beer or a 13% Belgian Quad. It will also lead to predictability if you keep halfway decent records. In time, there will be no more wondering "how's this batch going to turn out?" I realize everybody wants to do it their way, which is part of the reason to homebrew in the first place, I just thought I'd point out that aspiring for high ABV is by far not the only reason people measure gravity.

There's these things called instructions. When correctly followed, home brewing is about as dangerous as home canning, probably less so. MOST of us do just that...

He was trolling. 99.99% of what he said was false. No one can get seriously ill or die from any organism in beer. There are zero known pathogens that can survive in beer/wort. He was also dead wrong about a lot of things he said about distilling.